Phantoms & Specters. Lisa Yorio

speculation that ghosts and hauntings are analogous to tape recordings , and that electrical mental impressions released during emotional or traumatic events can somehow be "stored" in moist rocks and other items and "replayed" under certain conditions. The idea was first proposed by British archaeologist turned parapsychologist Thomas Charles Lethbridge in 1961. Lethbridge believed that ghosts were not spirits of the deceased, but were simply non-interactive recordings similar to a movie.

      

      A friend and coworker of mine told me this bizarre story that happened to her when she was a teenager many years ago. I thought it was very eerie and fascinating.

      It was a crisp, chilly afternoon in the late 60's. It was sunny with a slight breeze. My friend Shirley was walking home from school down a lonely road in the Illinois countryside. She was taking the same route as she always did when she noticed something strange coming down the road. She could hear the creaking of the wheels and the clopping of the horse's hooves.

      She felt a little nervous, but they seemed innocent and non-threatening. She thought it was odd that she never seen them until this day. After all, she had been traveling this road for years and had never run into them before. She began to wonder why they were there and where were they going? She couldn't recall of any Amish communities nearby and this was in the middle of nowhere. She thought to herself, they would have a long journey ahead to the next town, especially by buggy. Where could they possibly be coming from?

      The buggy brought her to a couple of streets over from her house. It just suddenly stopped. She felt like she should get out and walk the rest of the way home. She thanked them and walked down the short steps to the road. She thought it was strange that they seemed to know where she lived even though she did not tell them. She started walking down the road. Minutes later she turned around to wave but to her astonishment the buggy vanished into thin air.

      She was stunned and couldn't believe it. Had she just taken a ride in a ghostly buggy? Did she just see and experience a glimpse from the past? Or was it just her imagination? She did admit that she felt that she was in a dreamlike state while she was riding on the flatbed. Everything seemed a little foggy to her. Did she experience a time rift or opening in the universe were perhaps she traveled back in time or did the Amish people travel forward and they met somewhere in the middle? Or could this have been residual energy of the spirits who have died in a crash on the road?

      I know that Shirley has seen ghosts before several times and is very intuitive to the spirit world. It would only make sense that they would try to interact with her on this level.

      Many years later when she was married and living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she witnessed her husband having his own paranormal experience. She remembers him waking up, sitting up abruptly, and saying he was having horrible nightmares. This would happen often. She said the atmosphere of the apartment always felt a little eerie and weird. One evening, she heard him yelling in the bedroom. She walked into the room, and saw him flailing his arms all around himself, as if he was trying to hit something. She also noticed a strange mist surrounding his body. It was almost as if some kind of entity was attacking him. Eventually, they moved out and the activity stopped.

      Did Shirley travel through a portal, experience a time slip, or witness a residual haunting. I believe she experienced a little of both. Many times a haunting or a paranormal experience can have more than one type of haunting or phenomena going on at the same time. A portal is an opening an opening or a doorway where spirits can enter the physical realm. Could Shirley have gone through a portal, gone back in time, and then returned in a matter of minutes? I have read many accounts where a portal can appear out of nowhere in no specific location, all over the world, and then suddenly disappear never to re-appear again.

      I believe she experienced a time slip and a residual haunting. A Time Slip is a paranormal phenomenon in which a person, or group of people, seem to either travel through time by unknown means, or appear to briefly enter an alternate version of present reality by unknown means. Some people who experience this get a feeling of depression or loneliness about the place. They also may feel dreamy and oppressive whereas other time slip witnesses experience no such feelings during the event. They can be completely unaware that there is anything unusual going on until after the fact, when they find out later that the place they were in was not really as they experienced it. Reports vary as to whether those experiencing time slips can take an active part in the event, interacting with the time being “visited.” In other cases, the subject is a passive observer of the past scene, and it seems that the typical time slip lasts only a matter of a few minutes.

      A residual, is also known as a place memory, and is the most common type of haunting. In most cases it does not involve a ghost or a spirit interacting with the people who are witnessing it. This type of sighting is a remnant of a past traumatic event that happened at or near the location prior to someone's death. The same scenes of the haunting or sounds are repeated over and over again in an unchanging loop and often at specific times. Residual hauntings are records of energy that have been imprinted in the area which the event took place and is released in the present world. They are not direct communication with the living, and they are quite benign and harmless.

      Limestone, Quartz, and Magnetite deposits can supposedly hold information, such as an event in history, and when the information is released a residual haunting may occur. The haunting may take place once a year, once a month, once a week, or on rare occasions, you may only see it one time only. Some people are more sensitive to observing these hauntings and typically they occur in older buildings, homes, and battlefields.

      Since the people on the truck were not talking and not aware that Shirley was there, this is one indicator that it was a residual haunting. Shirley could have physically put herself in the scene, not intentionally but she could have been susceptible to the paranormal events enfolding in front of her. Basically, she somehow placed herself inside the residual haunting. She could have been seeing a vision of something that happened in the past or she could have experienced a time slip where she was a passive observer watching the past, slightly interacting with the events going on and then return to the present time in a matter of minutes. She was foggy and in a dreamlike state and did not realize what was going on at the time until afterwards. This is typical of a time slip.